Made Of Glass
by aprettyfacelies
Summary: She's sitting on the choir room floor with tears falling down her face with she realizes that 'weak' is now a word she can use to describe herself.
1. The Notebook

She's sitting on the floor of the choir room with tears running down her face when she, Rachel Barbra Berry, realizes something that only makes her want to cry more:

Weak is now a word she can frequently use to describe herself.

All because of a boy that gives her the day of light when it suits him, throwing her away like a piece of trash when he gets bored with her never disappearing love of Broadway and her unavoidable ramblings. His name is doodled on every single page of the book sitting on the tile floor beside her and she doesn't know if she wants to open it or not. There's a part of her that wants the pain that will come from reading his name over and over again, because she's desperate to perfect everything; even wallowing in self pity and swimming in a puddle of tears caused by heartbreak.

But there's this one voice in her head - far too soft to make a difference but loud enough to make her stop and think for a second - telling her that she needs to get up and find a trash can to throw the book in. Like he had done to her feelings, like he had done to her heart, like he had done to the future she had seen them share in her dreams.

_Just throw it away like it doesn't matter because you don't matter to him. You never fucking mattered._

The little whisper at the back of her mind is showing her a glimpse of the light, but at the same time it's pulling her further into the cold darkness. Only because she wants to matter to someone, to anybody. The back of her head hits the leg of the piano she's sitting in front of and her eyes are closed and she's back to dreaming.

Dreaming has always been a distraction for her harsh reality, a way to escape when everything got to be a little too much. In the dream world she created, she's needed because she is loved, not because she is talented. She's loved because her heart's a prize that someone wants to win and not because her vocals have won someone a prize. She's kissed and touched because Finn wants to show her how much he loves her, not because he wants to get himself some kind of fix to have the bulge of his pants vanish.

She loves the golden painted walls of the world of her dreams, and the safety and security of knowing that she is appreciated for both her voice and her heart. She loves knowing she is loved for everything she is, even the things she doesn't like and everyone in the real world hates about her.

_Acceptance_, she thinks, _I need it more than I need applause._

A hand rushes up to wipe away the dry tears sticking to her cheeks when she sees the door swing open. She isn't fast enough to at least make an attempt at freshening up and she's too afraid to look up from the sneakers her gaze is fixed on, but she knows the eyes staring down at her can see everything.

"Rachel," his voice is kind and dripping with concern, but it isn't the voice she wants to hear. "Are you okay?"

_I've been sitting on the floor for the past hour crying my eyes out, Finn got back together with Quinn and no one's bothered to check up on me until now. Yes, I'm doing wonderfully and you?_

She sort of wishes she was capable of covering up her true feelings and emotions with anger and hatred for the world around her, like so many females she came into contact with day in and day out, but she wasn't any of them. She was Rachel, 'put my heart on the line and hope for the best' Rachel, 'romance is one of the greatest forces on this world and I want it, I believe in it so much it hurts' Rachel. There was a large chunk of her that didn't want to be Rachel any longer. It seemed treating men like dirt attracted them to you like flies (and vice versa, if the Finn and Rachel saga was anything to go by) and people seemed happier in those situations, even if they all ended badly.

Temporary happiness was better than loneliness in her books, and she vowed never to rewrite what she had been written because that applied to she and Finn and they were destiny. She wasn't going to be the one to tamper with destiny, not when she didn't have the strength to challenge it any longer. Not after it had knocked her down so brutally.

"I'm fine," she whispered, her voice raspy and worn and torn.

Scrambling off the floor, she finally gathered up the courage to look at his face, but she kept her eyes from meeting his. She immediately noticed the slight downwards curl of the corners of his lips and the wrinkle between his eyebrows. She doesn't have the energy to tell him what the problem is, even though he probably already guessed, and she makes a dash for the door when she sees his lips part.

His unspoken 'want to talk about it?' turned into a 'where are you going?', with only the first word making it out of his mouth and into the open air before she was out of the room, into the empty hallways, and heading home. He doesn't go after her because she isn't his to chase after, so he just stands awkwardly in the front of the door and looks piano she was sitting against.

She hopes he'll spot the book on the floor (he does), she hopes he'll be curious enough to open and flip through it (he is), she hopes he'll get the answer to the question she ran away from in the margins of the pages (he already knows the answer, she knows he does too) and she prays he doesn't know she left her book there on purpose because him giving it back will be one of the most uncomfortable moments of her life (he knows her plan, all too well, figured it out the minute he saw the star covered book on the marble tile but he'll lie and act as though he doesn't because he gets why she did it and he doesn't want to hound her for information, or bombard her with the questions filling his mind).

It's funny how she didn't realize he was standing at the door the entire hour she was in the choir room, watching her cry but saying nothing because he couldn't find the right words, because he didn't feel he could comfort her as much the silence. It's strange how he was the only one who scolded the tall jock for his actions a while after he saw his and the blonde strolling down the hallways, hand-in-hand, like they had never broken apart. He hates how he couldn't pluck up the courage to make an effort to comfort her a little sooner.

No, he isn't doing as horribly as she is and perhaps he cares a little too much but she needs a pillar and he's the only one who'll see through her show face the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. He's the only one who's prepared to carve through her thick walls of mock happiness, stubbornness, protectiveness and denial, just to show her how much he cares when he shouldn't be caring at all.

_Acceptance_, he thinks, _she needs it more than she pretends to need applause._


	2. Jake and Kim, Kim and Jake

She's seated with her legs crossed on his couch, committing a sin – one she's pretty sure the vegan Gods will never forgive her for – that has everything to do with the scoop of vanilla ice cream in her mouth, when she realizes they've been using her notebook as an excuse to spend time together.

It started off as his way of keeping an eye on her a few days after their brief encounter in the choir room. He had a feeling she would prefer hiding behind her perfect show-face to laying her heart on the table again so he came up to her locker in the afternoon with an excuse. He had forgotten her book so he suggested she came over to pick it up herself and she agreed with a simple shrug of her shoulders.

He glanced back at her every now and then as he drove to his place, taking in the bags under her hooded eyes and the slump of her shoulders. She noticed her notebook peeking out from his unzipped book bag in the back seat when she turned to get her iPod out of her own bag.

Neither of them said a word the entire journey there.

The Chang residence was quieter than she had expected, and it had a lot more dragons hanging on the walls in her mind. She couldn't help but notice how many pictures of him practically covered the wall that followed the stairs that lead to the second floor of their home.

Baby Mike with his mother and father after she had just given birth to him. The older man's face covered in sweat with a little blood dripping from his hand, the woman's bangs clinging to her forehead as she stared down at the little wonder that she helped create. She couldn't really see much of Mike himself, though, just his tiny hand reaching out for his mother's face.

Mini Mike with yellow streaks in his hair and a heavy looking golden pyramid hanging around his neck with a gap-toothed mini Matt by his side wearing a blonde wig and green jacket, the both of them smiling like they had just won a year's supply of candy. "It was our first Halloween together as best friends," he told her a few days later, "back in kindergarten."

Her favourite was probably tween Mike with a circular, orange ball in his right hand that had a star in the very middle and a Pikachu sitting comfortably on his left shoulder. She laughed when he told her he still couldn't sleep peacefully without both of those items sitting at the corner of his bed, on top of Snorlax (his favourite pillow).

Most of her first visit was filled with questions about the pictures on the wall, and even though she didn't get to learn about every single one she enjoyed listened to the stories behind half of them. The two of them genuinely forgot about her notebook and when she returned home and opened her bag to find that it wasn't present, she sighed in relief.

How they had managed to keep this going for a month baffled her mind, but she wasn't ready to question it just as yet.

"So, ninjas don't speak?" Is what had left her lips in the place of the question floating around her head.

"It would ruin the whole image. We're mysterious and deadly beings, the only way we communicate is through battle. If we spare you, we like you. If we murder you, we don't. If we hurt you, don't step on our toes again. That's all you need to know."

"But what if you're sent to kill someone you love?"

She's thinking of Finn when she asks that question, immediately getting more ice cream into her mouth so her companion wouldn't see her lip tremble.

It's completely useless, because he knows, but she likes to pretend she's not such an open book around him. He just goes along with it, knowing he would turn incredibly awkward if he made it clear that he knows far too much about her already.

"That's an assassin's job. And assassins aren't cool." _Finn's an ass and assholes aren't cool._

They spend the rest of the afternoon bouncing off ninja codename ideas. She keeps suggesting names that include the word 'star' and he's trying to fit the name of a Pokémon into his. He decides he's simply going to call her Kim (because she can do anything) and she's extremely reluctant to call him Ron and he honestly believes she's afraid of offending him and he shows he it doesn't really matter when he stands up and does the most ridiculous dance she's seen in her life.

They settle for another name for him (Jake, to which he happily agrees to by rapping about being the American dragon) before she packs up her books and leaves for home at six like she had done every day since he had first 'forgotten' her notebook. She was beginning to wonder what he had done with it (he considered throwing it out, but he kept it just in case she might have actually wanted it back one day).

When she falls back against her bed, looking up at the golden stars stickers he had helped get onto her ceiling when they had first gone to her house instead of his like they normally would, she's terrified because she's calling herself his Rose and in her mind, he's her Ron and everything is spinning in her head so fast that she kind of wants to sit up and pick up the phone, upchucking her word vomit while he listens and hoping he won't think she's completely insane by the time she's finished.

But then she remembers he has a Rose he's very happy and even though she has him, it feels like she has no one. She doesn't really know when acceptance simply wasn't enough to feed her hungry heart any longer but she blames him for giving her something else to wish for that will never come true.

He seems to forget that Rachel isn't his Rose and that he shouldn't be as happy spending time with her as he is spending time with Tina and he's beginning to loathe himself for acting in the same way her previous suitor did. But he can't blame her because it's his fault and he intends to fix it all.

The following morning, she finds her notebook in her locker with a paper beside it with three words written on it.

_I FOUND IT! _

She wanted to laugh at the little stick man dance he had doodled at the bottom of the little piece of paper. She wanted to smile at the fact that she had gotten her notebook back just in time for her next algebra test because it contained a few important notes about a couple of tricky equations. She wanted to feel proud of herself for not bursting into tears at the sight of Finn's name on each of the pages but she didn't do anything but stare at it for a good two minutes before shoving it back into her locker and closing it with a loud bang.

He passed by her locker after the final bell sounded and he waved at her with the widest grin on his face. She adjusted the strap of her bag as she waved back, beaming just as much as he was as she prepared herself to escort him to his car. She paused mid-step when he didn't wait for her to catch up, when he didn't tease her about how she was going to drool when they watched Zac Efron in Hairspray that afternoon, when he didn't try to convince her that playing Pokémon would be better for his health than dancing around to the songs in Mamma Mia.

He walked right by, enveloping the girl with fishnet stocking into a tight hug at the far end of the hallway before exiting the school without so much as giving her a second glance.

It seemed she had forgotten about the picture in his house that wasn't hung up on his wall for all to see, the picture that didn't bother her at all for the first three weeks of visits and fun and games, the picture that he had labelled one of his most prized possessions, the picture that had be put on his bedside table.

Happy Mike and happy Tina, holding each other so closely it looked like it might have been hard for them to breathe, their lips pressed together as the corners of their lips curled into smiles, the Camp Asian emblem on the arms of their purple employee hoodies.

_If we hurt you, don't step on our toes again._

His words repeated like a disturbing mantra as she walked to a place she knew wasn't home, rubbing at her eyes and swallowing back the lump in her throat that just wouldn't go away long enough for her to not allow more tears to fall.

_The only way we communicate is through battle._

"Don't forget me, I beg," she sang under her breath, her voice hoarse and dry. "I remember you said,"

_Sometimes you last in a battle where you're clearing losing, because the person fighting you doesn't really want to hurt you at all. But in the end, as a ninja, you have to make a choice._

"Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead."

"Rachel?" His voice was warm, curious, comforting, worried, and familiar.

"Sometimes it lasts…S-Sometimes…" She croaked as she stopped in hr tracks, her legs refusing to allow her to go any further. She took in a few shaky breaths as his arms wrapped her in for a tight hug but she couldn't hug back, her hands clasped together and sandwiched between both their bodies, awkwardly resting on her chest and the lower half of his torso.

"Ssh, Rachel, it's going to be okay."

"Noah, mommy says you have to help with the – Noah, what's wrong?"

All she hears through her sobs is the pitter patter of an eight year old's footsteps, running towards her until a pair of small arms were wrapped around her thigh in a possessive manner, a larger arm wrapped around her waist while the other brushed against her shoulder each time the owner of the limb stroked at her hair to try and calm her down.

_Sometimes it hurts instead._

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><p><strong>The End<strong>

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><p><em>I just wanted to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter (don't be afraid to review twice, feedback is always nice. Or review for the first time if you haven't before, feedback is always nice.), everyone who wanted alerts on updates of this story, everyone who favourited this story already, everyone who actually read this story.<em>

_I was so humbled by the response I got since I had taken such a big break from writing fiction and I was just so happy to see you all enjoyed reading it as much as I fretted about whether this was good or absolute junk._

_And also, if the story status wasn't enough to send you off about my little joke, this isn't the last chapter. FOOLED YOU (I HOPE)._

_But once again, thank you!_

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><p><strong>LIST OF REFERENCES<strong> (for those of you who think a few things sound familiar but can't pinpoint it, and because I wanted to tell you):

**Pokémon:**

Pikachu mention, duh.  
>'Snorlax' is also the name of a Pokénom who loves to snooze.<p>

**Yu-Gi-Oh!:**

The picture where Mike and Matt were dressed for Halloween. Mike was dressed as Yugi Muto and Matt was dressed as Joey Wheeler.

**Glee:**

Rachel is said to be a vegan, and strict vegans do not eat dairy products. And I honestly don't see Mike's mother having 'vegan friendly' milk for her young, growing little boy.

The favourite pillow idea comes from Mike cuddling a pillow in BIOTA. In my head canon, he's just a big lover of pillows. Period.

**Disney:**

Kim, the nickname given to Rachel, comes from Kim Possible. Ron Stoppable is her best friend turned boyfriend by the end of the show.  
>Jake, the nickname given to Mike, comes from Jake Long from the show American Dragon. Rose is his long interest throughout the series and inevitably becomes his girlfriend by the end of it.<p>

**Adele:**

_Someone Like You_ was all up in there at the end of the story.


	3. Completely, Intolerably Stupid

**A/N:** I really needed to update this story and in my haste, the little read through I do in about the five paragraphs was forgotten and really, I just wanted to get this out there. I know this chapter is shorter and isn't as quality as the others but I apologize. I'm writing this at three in the morning, I'm sleepy and that is never a good combination for writing with me but what can I do.

All errors and mistakes are my own, as usual.

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><p>Leaving her the way he did, fast and wordlessly, should not have been as hard to get over as it was. It wasn't supposed to make everything worse, but it did. And the internal conflict didn't seem to get better either. He had a sinking feeling he had done the wrong thing, that he had gone about things incorrectly. He really couldn't convince himself otherwise, unfortunately.<p>

"How can you be so utterly, completely, intolerably stupid?"

He asks himself this question for a good few hours as he lies beneath Tina, their lips locked in a desperate but distant frenzy of emotions. His hands are clinging onto her waist and his fingers are tracing little circles on her skin, the occasional uneven and far too rounded star making its way onto her soft skin and that only causes his grip to grow tighter for a moment or two before he finds a way to relax his hands.

Their tongues dance and on occasion, she moans out his name and he finds his mind wandering to thoughts of Rachel, thinking up ideas and scenarios concerning what she would moan in such a situation. His hips tend to thrust up involuntarily as he imagines her calling out a melodious and continuous chant of "Michael". This eventually causes Tina's dress to be disposed of and his pants to be pulled down hastily and tossed blindly at the floor of his bedroom.

His girlfriend doesn't feel the way she should around him and with every thrust and whimper and groan that leaves her lips, his body responds with experience and an extremely lustful need. His mind tells him he's cheating. He isn't quite sure what and who he's cheating on but it leaves a sickening taste on his tongue so he tries his best to keep his lips away from hers and she doesn't seem to mind that much, taking it as his way of asking her for something a little less intimate and a little more rushed.

He knows she thinks it's because his parents are coming home early and he knows she'll realize once she has her clothes back on that his parent's won't be back until eleven and they have the entire night together. She won't say anything because he's a guy, she's a girl and surprisingly, she's usually the bigger fan of 'quickies' so she'll understand that this is one of those rare occasions where he simply needs to get off.

He holds her close and wraps his arms around her securely once their finished and done. Her breathing is a little off with its timing but she had a tired and satisfied smile on her lips so he knows she's perfectly fine. He wishes he was the same. He idly twirls a strand of her hair around his finger and rests his chin on her shoulder, murmuring sweet nothings into her ear until she finally fell asleep. He didn't separate from her, just tangled their legs together and took in the scent of her hair. His eyes darted to the clock on his bedside table and he sighed quietly when he noticed it was only six and that the girl in his arms was going to be awake by eight and he'd have to keep lying about everything unintentionally and unwillingly for another three hours before she headed for home.

He doesn't know when he became that guy. The guy that started stringing girls along with his crazy emotional truck ride down a dusty road because he couldn't decided where exactly he wanted to go. He guesses the difference between him and all the other guys like that is that he thought she was what he wanted. Every bone in his body told him that continuing down the path he was going down with Rachel was a bad one.

His parents would never approve of her like they approved of Tina.

He'd loved Tina for so much longer, for all he knew this whole thing as a passing phase of their newly found friendship and would fade eventually.

The chaos it would cause in Glee Club would destroy any chances they had at getting to Nationals.

He just couldn't feel that way.

So he lied.

The girl in his arms makes him feel like he's dancing on the sun and even though it sounds extremely painful, it's simply wonderful. He can dive down with the intention of crashing and she'd save him. She'd fall and sprain her ankle and he's fix her. She'd make him laugh when he felt down in the dumps and he'd kiss away all her pain should she need his shoulder to cry on and his shirt to cling onto.

He doesn't want to think about how Rachel's fits that same description almost a little too well. He doesn't want to think about how in his mind, he's been wishing it was Rachel here instead.

He looks down at Tina's peaceful expression and his brows furrow in thought. He realizes he did it because he thought it was right for basically everyone but him. He did it to avoid hurting anyone else. He did it because he wanted to feel safe, because jumping a little too far out of his comfort zone always put him on edge. He did it for her, to allow her to clear her head without having a boy interfere with her healing process (admittedly, it was a little too late to save her from that, he decided). He did it for Tina, because she doesn't deserve the heartbreak. He did it for love, that's got to count for something.

It doesn't make him feel any better and as he slips his arms free and rolls onto his back, clasping his hands over his chest and staring at the ceiling, he knows that love isn't good enough anymore. Not in this situation.

He gets off the bed and finds himself a piece of paper and a pencil, scribbling down that he headed out for a breath of air and he'll be back as soon as possible. He doesn't want Tina to worry about his whereabouts, and he doesn't want to tell her where he's going either because in all honesty, he has absolutely no idea. He grabs his shirts and jeans off the floor and throws them on before quietly tip-toeing toward the bedroom door, halting in his movements as he hears a sleeping whine leaving the girl he left on his bed. He glances over his shoulder and sighs in relief, noting that she was only rolling over, and suppressing an amused chuckle at the fact that she's cuddling one of his pillows as if it were him.

He makes his way downstairs and as he's grabbing his jacket from the hanger behind the door and pulling his keys out of the jacket's front pocket, he pauses for a moment to reconsider doing this. He shakes his head free of the thoughts and simply explains to himself that he needs this. And when he takes that first step out of his house and onto the cold ground of the outside world, the cool night breeze caressing his cheek, he knows he's made the right choice.

He allows his legs to take him wherever they want to and all he does is stare up at the sky, his shoulders tensing immediately as he finally lowers his gaze and notices where he's landed himself, the sight in front of him causing his shoulders to tense.


	4. I Love You

**A/N:** First of all, this hasn't been proof read, my apologies. Second, I forced my muse out for this, because I felt that the lot of you that are getting alerts for this or are just reading it for the first, second, third of even forth time deserve this update. I love every single one of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting this work of angst. I really appreciate it.

I'm also working on a new project, involving Cherry of course, which I hope to get out in late January of February. If any of you are interested in knowing me, review and tell me or send me a private message and I'll lead the way for updates.

Once again, thank you for being so patient with me. I less than three you.

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><p>Two months.<p>

It had been two months since they'd last spoken.

They don't greet one another when they pass each other in the halls. She doesn't glance at him during Glee Club and clings to Puck for dear life. He suffocates himself in a world of sorrow, unnecessary angst and self hatred and blames it all on his somewhat inevitable break up with Tina.

Everything's the way it should be, they force themselves to believe.

But every time she opens up a page of her notebook, she notices that she has his name doodled in the margins on the fresher pages, and that Noah's is no where to be seen. And it's so wrong, it's so wrong because he doesn't deserve the space or the blue ink. He isn't worth the time she spends singing Someone Like You as she stares at herself in her mirror.

And yet, somehow, he does. Because in the madness of that stupid day when she found herself strolling into the choir room with her fingers laced together with Puck's, she noticed his sour expression. The pain and heavy hints of jealousy were painted clear for all the world to see. In his eyes, the corners of his lips that were tugged into a frown, the way he jumped out of his seat and practically ran out of the room when Mr. Schuester excused them for the day.

Of course, in the hours following the incident, she found a little joy in seeing him suffer. Because he was a coward, because she could replace the memory of her singing Smile with Finn Hudson in the choir room with the image of Michael Chang sulking around the halls of McKinley as she strolled past him with her arm hooked around Noah Puckerman's. Being she was finally getting hers. Because she was happy and he wasn't and karma was a glorious thing.

The high of angered bliss lasted for that day and that day alone. It lingered in the back of her mind for a week more, but on the forefront of her thoughts were dozens of questions she simply couldn't answer because the answers she had guessed didn't really make any sense at all.

She had eventually decided to not think about it at all two weeks after that, because it kind of made her heart sting a little too much and she was finding it harder and harder to not sing Adele to herself in her car after school was over and Puck wasn't coming over to be her acoustic accompaniment and make out or she wasn't going over to his place to help him babysit.

Rachel should have been happy. Puck was wonderful, perfect even. The butterflies in her stomach did flips and fluttered like maniacs whenever his lips brushed against the sensitive spot on her neck. He was a vocal match, a wonderful vocal match that didn't mind singing along with her whenever she asked him to watch a musical with her on Fridays. He liked her and only her, he made her feel like she was the sun and he and his heart were revolving solely around her. He made her feel like she was the brightest star in his sky.

And it was good enough for her, if not more than enough, and she relished the feeling and cherished his company and the feeling of her hand his his every single moment they were together.

But the moment Tina walked into the practice room without Mike anywhere in sight, only to have Mercedes shoot daggers at the boy when he finally showed up ten minutes late, something inside of her changed.

She doesn't make a show of it, though. There wouldn't be any point. She simply watches him suffer quietly, from afar, and all too soon, she finds herself suffering with him.

It sort of starts to show, the burden on her shoulders. Her hair isn't as in place as it should be everyday, she doesn't raise her hand or call Mr. Schuester and the rest of the club out when they she isn't at least their first choice for a solo, she's matching her argyle sweaters with her checkered skirts and there are bunnies on one sock and stars on the other when she changes her clothing after getting slushied for the millionth time.

She likes to think he notices these things and sees a little of his current self in her. He, of course, starts blaming himself for her strange behavior that no one else can wrap their hands around.

And when he miraculously starts to visibly heal and return to his former self (at least on the outside), she realizes that through all of this, he still cares for her as much as he did that first day in the choir room when she was curled in a ball against the piano's leg with dry tears framing her face.

It's enough to make her better herself, but it isn't enough to stop that dull pounding in the back of her head at had gotten louder and softer and louder again as time went on. No, it's between too loud and a little too soft. They're both back to square one again, she realizes. Only he's the shattered one of the two and she has no idea what to do about it, if it's her place to do anything about it at all.

She's sitting on her bedroom floor with Noah's head rested on her lap, sound asleep, when she, Rachel Barbra Berry, realizes something that only makes her want to kick Puck's head off of her body and replace it with someone else's:

Weak is still a word she could use to describe herself. And now Mike, as well.

"Hey, Rach?"

She looks down at the uncharacteristically quiet and hushed boyfriend on her floor and on her lap, a curious glint in her eyes and a hint of a smile on her lips because his gaze always manages to do that to her, whether or not she sure she wants it to.

In a whisper, he says, "I love you," and she suddenly thinks of Mike. She wonders how those words would sound rolling off of his lips, instead of thinking of the fact that Puck has just said those three words to her for the very first time. Her head still lowers itself down and she peppers his jawline with a series of light kisses that make one half of her heart soar and the other half of her heart clenched ever-so-painfully.

"I love you too, Noah."

She wants to cry at the sound of the words leaving her lips, so effortlessly.

She wants to cry because she means it.

She chooses to smile back at the boy below her instead, forcing herself to revel in the moment itself and not everything it implies and the weight those three words will now carry.


	5. We Were Both Eighteen & It Felt So Right

**A/N: **I woke up a few mornings back to find an email telling me that someone had alerted to this story, and I found myself asking why you all were still reading this, supporting this story. And I answered myself by saying "they probably want to know how it all ends." And so, I got to working on this again, because I need to know myself.

I want to thank you all so much for having such faith in this story, all the favorites and alerts mean a lot to me, and even the small of amount of reviews I'm gathered, and just, thank you so much. I love you all.

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><p>It's on the afternoon of their final performance as New Directions, on a stage in front of a crowd of one, that he realizes that he's been wasting away and she's been doing the same. But slowly, as days passed and weeks come and went and they still hadn't said a word to one another, she wasted less and less and eventually, become happy. Almost genuinely happy. And he was still stuck in the same rut he had been months before.<p>

Everyone's happy, and singing about this happiness and their achievements and their growth as Mr. Schuester looks up at them all with proud tears threatening to fall down his cheeks. And Mike's smiling and dancing along because they won Nationals, and it feels right to finally win something after losing what feels like everything else that year. But as much as he tries, the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes and his limbs are moving and his feet are holding him up and he's popping and locking the seconds away, but as his shell does all of this, the hollowness within him chimes painfully through his ears.

He would have thought that by now, he would have given up or his heart would have given out and he wouldn't care about her any longer. Because time was supposed to heal all these fucking stupid wounds. But no, of course not. Of course he still can't tear his eyes away from the sight of her and her happiness, and he likes to think that he got her there, and he desperately wishes that he was the reason for her happiness, not just the push towards it. But he isn't.

Mike doesn't blame himself for anything but his own misery, but he can't hate the choices he made because they've been doing wonders for everyone but him. Sometimes he thinks that maybe this was always his role in the world, giving everyone else a reason to laugh and smile, his own pleasures be damned.

Tina's snagged herself a lemon-headed blonde and no one really knows how in the world that happened but no one really has any complaints because they don't have impromptu make-out sessions in the choir room and Tina doesn't break down crying tears of love as like she used to do with him, and it makes everyone feel less awkward around her. And they're both happy, so really, who cares how it happened?

And Rachel has Puck. "My Noah" she likes to call him, and all Puck does is laugh and shrug the name off because he's in love with her and she's in love with him and everything's perfect in their little bubble.

He thinks that he dug this deep hole in his heart by diverting from this circle of high school life, this is his punishment for thinking of himself and his own heart, for once.

And as he listens to _her_ sing the last note, everyone else trying to quietly catch their breath as they listened to her stamp the ending to their high school days, he promises himself to stop hurting and burning over this. To stop caring about her in this way, and what they might have been. To stop thinking about what could have been and starting focusing and centering his world around what can be, and what is.

He accepts the hug he's given by Brittany, doesn't care about her happy tears staining the sleeve of his shirt, and closes his eyes as he twirls her around and just lets go of all the regret and the sorrow and stupid teenage angst, his choked laughter a result of his own clogged throat and the feeling of freedom.

Being free from her after so long makes him feel like he can do anything. He's going to forget how she used to make him feel that way, for the shortest time. He forgets everything and just laughs.

He cries in his car before he starts his car to go Santana's farewell party. Finn, Sam and Artie laugh because his tears are so incredibly delayed and even the girls have stopped weeping. Puck playfully hits Mike's shoulder with a fist and quietly tells him he'll probably start crying tomorrow morning when he's sober and he spots his mother looking through photo albums on the couch downstairs.

And Mike doesn't want to kill him.

He just wants to get the night over with, get the drinking out of the way, and stagger up to his room when it was all over, fall onto his bed and fall asleep so he can dream of lovely, simple dreams that are void of her laugh and don't contain any traces of her smile. Finally, after tonight, he knows he'll be healed.

* * *

><p>Mike wakes up that Saturday morning with a splitting headache and an incessant knocking on his bedroom door. He doesn't grumble as he fights his way out from his tangled covers and sheets, scratching the back of his neck as he wobbles for a moment before getting a hold on himself and making his way to the door.<p>

He expects his mother to be waiting with a tray of her hangover remedy tea and a slight smile on her lips as she asks him about how his night went. Or at least, the parts of it he could remember. For a brief moment he thinks maybe it's his dad knocking on the door, because he doesn't remember his mother's knocking being so loud and so persistent, but his father's at work after seven and he doesn't take days or even hours off for anything that isn't majorly important.

To his dismay, he finds _her_.

His hair is a little messy and his shirt and boxers are wrinkled more than usual, and he can see faint groves on his arm from the small hump on his sheet that he had been unknowingly sleeping on the night before and none of it matters because his mom's seen him like this once or twice and she does a really good job of fixing up his hair while he groans and scolds himself for having so much to drink.

Pulling the door open, he parts his lips to let out a soft whimper and pushes his bottom lip out in a pout because his mother's a sucker for those and it normally guarantees him noodles in bed after the mother and son bonding time, but instead, he finds wide brown eyes, plump and somewhat swollen pink lips and a rabbit sweater that's two sizes too large.

And is she actually wearing baggy sweatpants?

"I hope you don't mind I decided to come over. I woke up at ten, and I knew you probably wouldn't be feeling alive enough to have visitors then, so I waited a half hour before coming over. I would have waited the whole hour, but then I would be awake and my daddy told me once that sharing a hangover with a friend is better than going through it alone, so really, I'm helping the both of us by showing up now."

She's left her shoes downstairs, he knows because it's been a rule to walk around barefoot in the house since forever, and he stares down at her feet, still looking over her appearance, and he has to say, the baby pink nail polish she has on compliments er skin tone quite nicely. Shaking his head of his thoughts, Mike returns his gaze to her face and doesn't say a word.

"Oh, your mother said I should bring this up with me. She said it would help with the hangovers."

He just stands there, blinking a few more times to try and clear his vision and when he stops and stills finds her standing in front of him, silver tray in her hands and a nervous smile etched onto her lips, he registers the fact that he hasn't said anything and he probably should. He makes the sensible choice and asks one of the several questions bouncing around in his head.

"Why aren't you...?"

"With Noah?"

All he can do is nod. He still hasn't woken up fully, and he's under the impression that is some kind of dream because he can see her laughing, and there's an echo of it hitting his ears and he thinks he might need a few more hours of sleep.

"Does it matter?" She pauses, and he wants to say yes, but he can't talk or form coherent sentences or even move his head, so she sighs and carries on, her shoulders slumped a little. "I'm leaving in a few months, to get settled in New York, and I don't want to leave with us like this. And I would have brought my infamous apology cookies, but I'm still a little buzzed and I should really start having those things on standby because I–"

"Rachel?"

"Hm?"

"Shut up." He carefully takes hold of her arms and pulls her into his room, kicking the door closed and wincing as it banged shut. She's still gaping at him because he isn't really one to say such things and he knows but he takes the tray from her hands and walks back to bed, kneeling down on his carpeted floor and placing the tray down in front of him without saying another word because he knows he's just unleashed another word vomit.

_Four seconds, five seconds, six, seven..._

"Don't tell me to shut up! You know, I don't have to be here and–"

"Sit down, drink, and be quiet. You'll give us both headaches."

He imagined this completely differently than how it turned out. He thought the next time they'd speak, he'd be at her wedding with a mohawk-less Noah and Puckerman attached to her first name. He thought it would be awkward, and unfamiliar, and he certainly thought they'd be better dressed.

But she listens to him and sits down and says nothing because she knows he's right about the headache thing, and she never really has been the best at drinking tea and talking at the same time (she normally ends up burning her lip or her tongue because she's distracted by the conversation), and they just take each other in and mirror one another's small and tired smiles.

She's half way through her cup of tea when she decides to speak, with her legs crossed and the sleeves of her sweater coating most of her hands as she clung to the cup in her hand. Her tea has cooled down a bit, and her headache and faint hints of grogginess have long left the building, and she thinks that if she doesn't speak now, they're both going to wind up in the silence of uncomfortable awkwardness they've been in for the past five or six months.

"I don't think I want to call you Jake anymore," she starts, keeping her gaze on the carpet and trying not to let it drift to his boxers because the Pikachu-inspired pattern is all sorts of enduring and distracting and so very Mike. "I didn't know what you were then, to me. I didn't know who _I _was then. But now that I do, I think I have suitable ninja code names for the both of us."

He's always been a boy of few words, and lately, he's become a man of even fewer words, so all he does is raise his eyebrow as a gesture for her to carry on, taking a slurp from his cup that he knows she hates but he does it anyway because she still looks cute when she scrunches her nose up in distaste.

"Harry and Hermione."

He rolls his eyes as he places his cup back down on the silver tray, bringing his knees up to his chest as he tries to muffle his laughter because this is far too good to be true. And she panics and starts questioning why he doesn't like it, offering solutions that just don't fit and he still doesn't say a word because he realizes he missed the sound of her voice, and he missed her whining and pouting and he forget how great his name sounded on her lips.

"Michael, if you don't like them, I-"

"I approve."

"Y-You approve?"

He nods, smiling now, but it's quickly wiped off his face as he feels a pillow hit his face and he hears her shouting at him for causing her to get so frantic when there wasn't anything for her to worry about and he thinks that the remainder of their tea is going to end up on the carpet somehow or cold and forgotten, but he doesn't really care as he climbs up onto his bed and grabs a pillow to defend himself with.

They're laughing, and there's a faint ache in the corner of his heart and he wonders if she's feeling that way too (she is) but he likes it because for once, his thoughts are cleared and he's happy, genuinely happy, because he has her back (like she has him) and maybe it's not what he's wanted or what he had hoped, but in that moment it's more than he could ever ask for and he loves this feeling of being free, and flying without the thought of her holding him down.

They're happy, and free, and flying across a never-ending sky with their fingers entwined and their laughing falling down into the streets below them and this feels right. He feels right and complete for the first time since he fixed her and she broke him, and somehow, he knows she feels that way too.

And as they both fall back on his bed, breathless and tired, clutching the pillows closely to their chest as their stomach start burning from all of their laughter, they both revel in this feeling. This feeling of acceptance, and finally accepting what their lives had become, and just making the best of it, together.

_We could leave this town and run forever.  
><em>_I know somewhere, somehow we'll be together.  
><em>_Let your waves crash down on me, and take me away._

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** I'm going to be honest, I don't know if I should end it here or not. It doesn't feel like _the_ end, it just feels like an ending. I don't know, I don't know. And the song quoted at the end of this chapter is Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard. Once again, thank you for the support and thank you for reading.


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